Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

Energy price hikes are a huge issue. It will cost a household €800 on average. There have already been 30 hikes since 1 January. People are already hard pressed with the cost of childminding, crèche facilities and rent and now they are faced with this. It is an issue of life or death. There is the concept of excess winter deaths. I have been trying to get my head around it recently. My understanding of it is that it measures the number of people who die over the winter months over and above the number of people who die, on average, over a similar period at other times of the year.

My understanding is that the State, fairly consistently, is at the top of the European table for the highest number of excess winter deaths - 2,000 or 2,500 per annum. Those people do not die simply of the cold; they die of a combination of the cold and fuel poverty. Now that we have this huge surge in energy prices on top of that.

What is the Government doing? The Minister is doing little or nothing, I would suggest. In some European countries, governments have taken significant action, not off their own bat but under extreme pressure from below in society. We have seen that in Spain, Greece and Italy, but there has been little or nothing here. There are things the Government could do. There is a 30% increase in the carbon tax. The Minister does not have to agree and say that the carbon tax should be abolished and replaced, by the way, with a serious tax on the big polluters in big business. He could just say, "Freeze the increase for this year", but the Government will not do that. The Minister could say that we will go down the road of price controls, with a tough maximum per-unit price for electricity and gas for home heating, etc. The Government will not do that. The Minister could say that the ESB should be run on a not-for-profit basis. The ESB made €363 million in the first six months of this year. Up until 2001, the ESB was allowed to operate on a break-even basis. Legislation was introduced and changes were made, and the company cannot do that anymore. It operates on a for-profit basis. It should operate on a not-for-profit basis whereby it would be allowed to break even and give back some of those huge profits to protect householders' living standards and, in some cases, lives this winter.

Deputy Doherty's proposal is a good one. It does all that we, as a committee, can do to suggest that a report be made. The State is charging VAT on these energy bills. The idea of waiving or reducing that is a positive step that could be taken to protect people, but the Minister will not do that.

Briefly, on the idea that this hits the wealthy, the not-so-wealthy and the poor, it may do so. If you are wealthy, you can absorb it. If you are not so wealthy, you will struggle to absorb it, to make ends meet and to heat your home. What many people are doing is rationing and only heating their homes to a fraction of what they really need. If you are poor, and particularly if you are poor and old, you could pay a very heavy price this winter. The policy could and should be changed. I support the proposal.